He’s correct. The Israelis have worked for decades to ensure that an independent Palestinian state is not a possibility. And they have accomplished that goal.
People outside Israel really need to let go of the fantasy of the two state solution. Trying to make a unified nation out of the handful of ethnic enclaves the Palestinians occupy would be like trying to make one viable independent nation out of all the US’s Indian reservations. That will never be possible, and the reason is that it was deliberately designed to make it impossible.
The two state solution is thoroughly dead and buried. There are only three futures for Palestinians at this point:
Slavery (Apartheid.)
Ethnic cleansing/genocide.
South Africa-style national reconciliation.
The rest of the world needs to move on from the two state solution. We should be demanding complete and equal Israeli citizenship for every Palestinian.
100 years from now, there will only be one nation in Palestine. Maybe that will be called “Israel.” Maybe it will be renamed something else as a reunified state. But there will not be a Palestinian-only state. It’s time to let go of that dream. At this point, seriously discussing the two-state solution just enables Zionism.
here is a fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both – and it won’t ever really be at peace
Israelis have made the choice, election after election for the last 2-3 decades to elect governments that expanded the settlements, derailed the figleaf of Oslo and destroyed the practicality of a Palestinian state. The choice for One State has been made and implemented. So now they are faced with Kerry’s stark dilemma: Jewish or democratic.
People’s response to this reality falls I think into one of four positions:
Accept that Palestinians should be destroyed as a people in their historic homeland.
Pretend that the two state solution is still viable.
Imagine some kind of apocalyptic establishment of a Palestinian-only state with the expulsion of the Israeli Jews.
Fight for a South Africa-style binational reconciliation on the basis of equal rights and democracy.
Option 3 sounds “anticolonial” and “revolutionary” but it is delusional as it ignores the facts on the ground. It is also unjust. Just like any other settler-colonial state from Canada, to Brazil, to the US, to Australia, there is no reset button that can be pressed to undo history. We have to live with the legacy of settler colonialism. There are Israeli jewish babies being born today that are third, fourth or fifth generation “sabras”. You can play the pseudofanonist edgelord and imagine some kind of Pied-noir style “the suitcase or the coffin” expulsion, but even the Pieds-noirs were only about 1 million and 10% of Algeria’s population, as opposed to about 7 million and 50% of the population of the land of historic Palestine. Those people aren’t going anywhere. The 7 million Palestinians are also not going anywhere unless the Israelis are allowed to complete the genocide.
The only path forward that is not (further) genocide or slavery is the extremely difficult path to decolonization. Reparations, truth and reconciliation, democracy, human rights for both communities. From the goddamn river to the goddamn sea.
The Israelis hate this solution more than any other as they know that if there was one state, they would be outnumbered and outvoted by the Palestinians. This is why Israeli rhetoric towards the Palestinians “breeding like rats” is so vile, they know they are outnumbered and another reason they are so eager to carry out their frequent mass killings or their more recent genocide.
Israel will resist this move as much as any of the others. Israel was created by the UN as a settler colony for European Jews nearly 80 years ago. There has been nothing but bloodshed ever since, it’s time to admit the Israel experiment was a failure. I will never understand why the Jews of Europe were not given a piece of Germany for their new state instead of a piece of Palestine that these Jews had no social or cultural connection to.
That makes it sound like it was the UN’s idea. Israel was planned by Zionists, then rubber-stamped by the UN after an extended terrorist campaign against Palestinians, British mandate officials and the UN.
He’s correct. The Israelis have worked for decades to ensure that an independent Palestinian state is not a possibility. And they have accomplished that goal.
People outside Israel really need to let go of the fantasy of the two state solution. Trying to make a unified nation out of the handful of ethnic enclaves the Palestinians occupy would be like trying to make one viable independent nation out of all the US’s Indian reservations. That will never be possible, and the reason is that it was deliberately designed to make it impossible.
The two state solution is thoroughly dead and buried. There are only three futures for Palestinians at this point:
Slavery (Apartheid.)
Ethnic cleansing/genocide.
South Africa-style national reconciliation.
The rest of the world needs to move on from the two state solution. We should be demanding complete and equal Israeli citizenship for every Palestinian.
100 years from now, there will only be one nation in Palestine. Maybe that will be called “Israel.” Maybe it will be renamed something else as a reunified state. But there will not be a Palestinian-only state. It’s time to let go of that dream. At this point, seriously discussing the two-state solution just enables Zionism.
John Kerry of all people warned of this in 2016:
Israelis have made the choice, election after election for the last 2-3 decades to elect governments that expanded the settlements, derailed the figleaf of Oslo and destroyed the practicality of a Palestinian state. The choice for One State has been made and implemented. So now they are faced with Kerry’s stark dilemma: Jewish or democratic.
People’s response to this reality falls I think into one of four positions:
Option 3 sounds “anticolonial” and “revolutionary” but it is delusional as it ignores the facts on the ground. It is also unjust. Just like any other settler-colonial state from Canada, to Brazil, to the US, to Australia, there is no reset button that can be pressed to undo history. We have to live with the legacy of settler colonialism. There are Israeli jewish babies being born today that are third, fourth or fifth generation “sabras”. You can play the pseudofanonist edgelord and imagine some kind of Pied-noir style “the suitcase or the coffin” expulsion, but even the Pieds-noirs were only about 1 million and 10% of Algeria’s population, as opposed to about 7 million and 50% of the population of the land of historic Palestine. Those people aren’t going anywhere. The 7 million Palestinians are also not going anywhere unless the Israelis are allowed to complete the genocide.
The only path forward that is not (further) genocide or slavery is the extremely difficult path to decolonization. Reparations, truth and reconciliation, democracy, human rights for both communities. From the goddamn river to the goddamn sea.
The Israelis hate this solution more than any other as they know that if there was one state, they would be outnumbered and outvoted by the Palestinians. This is why Israeli rhetoric towards the Palestinians “breeding like rats” is so vile, they know they are outnumbered and another reason they are so eager to carry out their frequent mass killings or their more recent genocide.
Israel will resist this move as much as any of the others. Israel was created by the UN as a settler colony for European Jews nearly 80 years ago. There has been nothing but bloodshed ever since, it’s time to admit the Israel experiment was a failure. I will never understand why the Jews of Europe were not given a piece of Germany for their new state instead of a piece of Palestine that these Jews had no social or cultural connection to.
That makes it sound like it was the UN’s idea. Israel was planned by Zionists, then rubber-stamped by the UN after an extended terrorist campaign against Palestinians, British mandate officials and the UN.